Posted on 03/28/2015 6:47:58 AM PDT by 9thLife
Apple has explored presenting iPhone users with non-dismissable notifications, such as requiring personal health data to be entered before resuming normal use of their device, in a concept that could help break bad habits.
The details were revealed in a newly published Apple patent application, discovered on Thursday by AppleInsider. Entitled "Notifications with Input-Based Completion," the filing describes prompts on an iPhone that would actively block access to using the device until certain data is entered.
The most prominent examples given by Apple in the filing are health-related. For example, screenshots show the user being prompted to check their weight or blood pressure through the iOS Reminders app.
Given Apple's recent launch of HealthKit and the accompanying Health app in iOS 8, along with the new fitness-focused Apple Watch, it's possible that Apple could use this method to encourage iPhone owners to keep up to date on the status of their health, rather than avoiding it.
In the application, Apple notes that data for these prompts can be received from connected third-party accessories. So in the case of checking blood pressure each day at 10 a.m., the data could be collected from an external sensor.
Other concepts presented by Apple include calories burnt per day, blood pressure, and body mass index. The system could also alert users when certain data exceeds a pre-set value, potentially helping the user to avoid serious health complications.
Of course, these non-dismissable alerts could also extend to actions beyond health data. In one example, the user is reminded to "take a picture of the construction," and the notification includes a quick link to the iPhone's camera.
Accompanying input boxes would also be found within the iOS Reminders app, with Apple showing text fields for blood pressure and weight, and as well as a camera button for the construction photo, next to the user-created tasks.
In the filing, Apple shows a new option for creating reminders entitled "Required User Input." Apple's concept also adds the ability to include tags, such as "Health" or "Projects," to reminders.
Published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week, the proposed invention was originally filed by Apple in September of 2013. It is credited to Gencer Cili.
They appear to be getting ready to use it. Whether it's a reminder system for the intractably stubborn or extortion just depends on who has control of the buttons.
OK, so it is a user selectable option. Thanks for the correction.
thanks, but I’m not really into cell phones, thus I’m still not getting Apple, or sprint, or Samsung or any of the other ones advertised constantly on tv and radio.
They’d have to rename the company to “Obama Computer.”
Next up: Sasquatch appearing in compulsory videos telling you what you are ALLOWED to eat before you can begin using your device. You’ll have to scan the bar code on every apple, banana, and orange you eat then submit the core, rind, or peel for ex-post verification of consumption. Ain’t life in Obamaland grand?
Yep..... that would be THE apple a day keeps the doctor away BS...... Wont be a party to such nonsensical nannies .....
Stay Safe!!
Appear? How? Apple has a great many patents they’ve done nothing with.
Sort of like Ford’s car that reads the speed limit signs and holds you to them......why would I buy one?
I heard Rush Limbaugh discuss this. I have to think that this is an optional feature for the Apple users who are health minded and want a mandatory daily reminder and run though of their health status. This is an attempt by Apple to make their devices helpful in the realm of health and taking care of oneself.
For those who have no interest in this they simply don’t set up this health check lockout option
That would be outside the scope of the patent. I assume Apple wouldn't implement this as mandatory on every device it sells, in small part because it requires external hardware, but mostly because they don't have a history of going out of their way to alienate customers.
As long as you have a choice, I don't suppose you would. Though a parent might like something like that as a first car for a teenager.
But that capability will lead to others. In fact it seems like a step to autonomously guided cars, using slightly modified infrastructure.
If the capability described in this piece is employed in smartphones, it's one more area over which someone or some entity can assert authority. In our current regime, the government has a vested interested in controlling people's health management as much as possible. It's driven by money. It doesn't care about limits of government or rights to self-government -- money-machines cannot care about such things. That makes any device which would serve it a potential threat to liberty, wouldn't it?
1) It's a patent. Apple patents lots of things that never make it into products.
2) Look at this in the light of recently-announced ResearchKit - if they were to implement this, it would be as an option for devices provided by researchers to collect data and locked down in such a way as to facilitate data collection.
Yes, in some fashion I guess one could interpret that all this is just a user-aid to ‘help’ them do what they want but don’t have the willpower to do so without some device to remind them. Okay.
Reading the filing, it does say “option” and such but it is not done so with direct specificity the USER has complete control over its functionality.
I’ve had enough iPhones, iTunes, etc. to come to the conclusions that they can make it damned difficult for the average user to change preselected options to their will and to make sure other applications functions as the USER wants. It is frustrating sometimes.
Regardless, I realize it’s a what if protection for them, but it’s just another ‘feature’ in a long line of crap I really don’t look for in a useful product for myself.
How many of these things STAY “optional”???? This things only lead to MANDATORY as the process goes. The imperial dictatorship in Sodom on the Potomac will take notice and it will be come a mandatory way to get and hold even more info on each of us. Eventually, the government will hold the card on everyone by MONEY. They will be giving out so much money to almost all the population. That leads to “IF YOU WANT YOUR MONEY YOU WILL DO IT OUR WAY OR WE CUT OFF THE MONEY SUPPLY.” I have long felt this would happen. With government money going out to so many. Social Security, disability of different types, government retirements, military retirements, etc. They will hold those over our heads. If we don’t do as Uncle Dictator tells us, we will have it cut off. Nothing these days stay our choice for long. Not when the government figures out they can make hay on it some way. More control over us. More power over us. To MAKE us do what THEY want us to do.
They've described how it would be implemented and used.
How many patents does Apple have that they've never done anything with, and prevented anyone else from being able to do anything with?
Lots. Actually rather a depressingly large number, as many of them are pretty darned cool.
With Apple? All of them.
So this is not necessarily a good thing.
No, it is not necessarily a good thing. But I can think of at least one time in which Apple acquired a patent for something for the purpose of keeping it off the market for the benefit of users. . . and if I recall correctly it was a means of breaking spam filters. I do not recall all of the details now, but Apple under Steve Jobs, bought a company that had developed something that was capable of easily compromising everyone's spam filters. . . and never utilized it. It is no longer useful because spam filter technology supposed the means used by that technology. But Apple kept it off the market until it had.
Shortly after that, Apple came out with their Heuristic Spam filter system, then the best there was.
Somehow I'm having a hard time imagining that anybody who'd use that would care about patents.
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